Obama Plans Text Announcement Saturday Morning

The Obama campaign announced earlier this month its plan to make the announcement by text messaging, sparking a rush by political reporters (and many more Obama supporters) to sign up for the text deliveries. The campaign then used the cell phone numbers to send out targeted messages to their owners.

Obama is scheduled to appear with his running mate tomorrow afternoon at a rally in Springfield, Ill.

What a magnificent choice. And I loved getting my text message at 2:43 AM. McCain hasn't generated this much excitement during his entire campaign. I don't think announcing his running mate on his SEVENTY SECOND b-day is a very smart idea either. Can you say OLD????
Obama/Biden08
YES WE CAN!

What a let down. In the middle of the night? Joe Biden? Agent of change? Well we will see if there is a "Biden Bounce." But which way. The real-time open poll at http://www.bop-o-rama.com should be hopping today. McCain's number topped 300,000 some time in the night. Let's see if the gap closed on Obama today. Will there be a Daily Gallup today?

Seeing as how people are making all sorts of suppositions about the Obama-Rezko conection I'm going to suppose that when Reagan dealt weapons to the Iranians, circumventing congress, and took the money and gave it to the Contras, who made crack cocaine and flooded the streets of LA with it, I'm going to suppose that Bonanno and the boys in Arizona were the network that trafficked it.

How do you like them apples?

You wanna unleash the dogs of war? OK. We'll see who's the last man standing in this one.

McCain's money is a little... dodgy. Well, more than just a little. Felony convictions, race tracks, assassination, stealing drugs...
and it doesn't even get into Keating or, more importantly, ***who Marley and Hensley worked for and with.***

"Mrs. Portalski said Mrs. McCain added insult to that injury by referring to herself, in her eulogy for her father, as his only child — while her half-sister sat in a front pew." - that's just cold blooded, but would you expect any more from *those people*.

So take away the hope and change and "new" politics from the Obama and what do you have left? Inexperience, seemingly reappearing angst in terms of allegiance to our country, connections with questionable past and questionable friends, and a weak candidate who makes Hillary Clinton look like royalty.

Thanks for the great concerts Mr. Obama, now it's time to move over and let the real Leader have the reigns.

Posted by: Anonymous | August 23, 2008 2:15 AM
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I am not sure where you get your information since Rove was not on any of the FOX News prime time programs or on the bulletin that pre-empted Greta's program. Maybe he sent a personal text message to you.

Fox broke the story between 9:00pm and 10:00 EST when they noted that a private plane that had departed Chicago had landed in Delaware. This was during the O' Reilly Factor which was being hosted by Laura Ingraham.

Biden knows where the bodies are buried. He was in the Senate when McCain was still in 'nam. Obama made the right choice. Who else could he have sent to Georgia? Joe Biden is brilliant and outstanding in every way -
and he is a good man too. Humanitarian man, man of wit, of humor.

okay now, all you Dems. waiting for that text message-don't wait up! otherwise you're just going to get hit up for money-it's gonna take LOTS OF CASH TO CONVINCE PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR A DO NOTHING AND A PLAGIARIZER BLOWHARD 65 YEAR OLD PROFESSIONAL CONGRESSIONAL RAT!

okay now, all you Dems. waiting for that text message-don't wait up! otherwise you're just going to get hit up for money-it's gonna take LOTS OF CASH TO CONVINCE PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR A DO NOTHING AND A PLAGIARIZER BLOWHARD 65 YEAR OLD PROFESSIONAL CONGRESSIONAL RAT!

YEA BUT JOHN TOLD ME IF I POSTED ENOUGH HE WOULD CUM IN MY MOUTH NEXT TIME.

Spring Rain, your work is done. you've proven mccain supporters to be unhinged lunatics incapable of rational debate or logical thought.
go and register your mccain points so that you can more quickly get your hands around mccain's white, dimpled balls. golf balls, that is.

Spring Rain, your work is done. you've proven mccain supporters to be unhinged lunatics incapable of rational debate or logical thought.
go and register your mccain points so that you can more quickly get your hands around mccain's white, dimpled balls. golf balls, that is.

BIG TO-DO OVER NOTHING, AND TYPICAL "OBAMA DRAMA"-THE DO-NOTHING OBAMA TEAMED UP WITH THE PLAGIARIZER ONE-NOTE BLOWHARD BIDEN, WHO'S SPENT HIS WHOLE LIFE TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE HE IS A FOREIGN POLICY EXPERT-NOT! TRULY THIS IS A REPLAY OF DUKAKIS/BENTSEN-SOMETHING QUITE A BIT LESS THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS-A DYNAMIC DUO THIS IS NOT! HA HA HA!

Both McCain III’s father and grandfather were Admirals in the United States Navy. His father
Admiral John S. ”Junior” McCain was commander of U.S. forces in Europe - later commander of
American forces in Vietnam while McCain III was being held prisoner of war. His grandfather
John S. McCain, Sr. commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.
McCain III, like his father and grandfather, also attended the United States Naval Academy.
McCain III finished near the bottom of his graduating class in 1958.

McCain III lost five U.S. Navy aircraft
1 - Student pilot McCain III lost jet number one in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus
Christi Bay while practicing landings.
2 - Pilot McCain III lost another plane two years later while he was deployed in the
Mediterranean. ”Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines
which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the
son of an admiral.
3 - Pilot McCain III lost number three in 1965 when he was returning from flying a Navy
trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. McCain III radioed, ”I’ve got
a flameout” and ejected at one thousand feet. The plane crashed to the ground and
McCain III floated to a deserted beach.
4 - Combat pilot McCain III lost his fourth on July 29, 1967, soon after he was assigned to
the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk combat pilot. While waiting his turn for takeoff, an
accidently fired rocket slammed into McCain Jr’s. plane. He escaped from the burning
aircraft, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors, destroyed at least 20 aircraft,
and threatened to sink the ship.
5 - Combat pilot McCain III lost a fifth plane three months later (Oct. 26, 1967) during his
23rd mission over North Vietnam when he failed to avoid a surface-to-air missile. McCain
III ejected from the plane breaking both arms and a leg in the process and subsequently
parachuted into Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi. After being pulled from the lake by the North
Vietnamese, McCain III was bayoneted in his left foot and shoulder and struck by a rifle
butt. He was then transported to the Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.

1973 New York Daily News labeled POW McCain III a “PW Songbird”
On McCain III’s fourth day of being denied medical treatment, slapped, and threatened with
death by the communist (they were demanding military information in exchange for medical
treatment), McCain III broke and told his interrogator, ”O.K., I’ll give you military information if you
will take me to the hospital.” U.S. News and World Report, May 14, 1973 article written by former
POW John McCain.
It was then that the communist learned that McCain III’s father was Admiral John S. McCain,
the soon-to-be commander of all U.S. Forces in the Pacific. The Vietnamese rushed McCain III to
Gai Lam military hospital (U.S. government documents), a medical facility normally unavailable
for U.S. POWs.
By Nov. 9, 1967 (U.S. government documents) Hanoi press was quoting McCain III describing
his mission including the number of aircraft in his flight, information about rescue ships, and the
order of which U.S. attacks would take place.
While in still in North Vietnam’s military hospital, McCain III gave an interview to prominent
French television reporter Francois Chalais for a series titled Life in Hanoi. Chalais’ interview with
McCain III was aired in Europe.
Vietnamese doctors operated on McCain’s Leg in early December, 1967.
Six weeks after he was shot down, McCain was taken from the hospital and delivered to a
U.S. POW camp,
In May of 1968, McCain III allowed himself to be interviewed by two North Vietnamese
generals at separate times.” May 14, 1973 article written by former POW John McCain
In August 1968, other POWs learned for the first time that John McCain III had been taken
prisoner.
On June 5, 1969, the New York Daily News reported in a article headlined Reds Say PW
Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral, “ . . . Hanoi has aired a broadcast in which the pilot son of
United States Commander in the Pacific, Adm. John McCain, purportedly admits to having
bombed civilian targets in North Vietnam and praises medical treatment he has received since
being taken prisoner . . .” The Washington Post explained McCain III’s broadcast: “The English-
Language broadcast beamed at South Vietnam was one of a series using American prisoners. It
was in response to a plea by Defense Secretary Melvin S. Laird, May 19, that North Vietnam treat
prisoners according to the humanitarian standards set forth by the Geneva Convention.”
In 1970, McCain III agreed to an interview with Dr. Fernando Barral, a Spanish psychiatrist
who was living in Cuba at the time.
The meeting between Barral and McCain III (which was photographed by the Vietnamese)
took place away from the prison at the office of the Committee for Foreign Cultural Relations in
Hanoi (declassified government document). During the meeting, POW McCain sipped coffee and
ate oranges and cakes with the Cuban.
While talking with Barral, McCain III further seriously violated the military Code of Conduct by
failing to evade answering questions ”to the utmost of his ability” when he, according government
documents, helped Barral by answering questions in Spanish, a language McCain had learned in
school. The interview was published in the in January 1970.

McCain III was released from North Vietnam March 15, 1973
In 1993, during one of his many trips back to Hanoi, McCain asked the Vietnamese not to
make public any records they hold pertaining to returned U.S. POWs. McCain III claims, that
while a POW, he tried to kill himself.

McCain III was awarded “medals for valor” equal to nearly a medal-and-a-half for each
hour he spent in combat
For 23 combat missions (an estimated 20 hours over enemy territory), the U.S. Navy awarded
McCain III, the son of famous admirals, a Silver Star, a Legion of Merit for Valor, a Distinguished
Flying Cross, three Bronze Stars, two Commendation medals plus two Purple Hearts and a
dozen service medals.
“McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat,” explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and former
chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs -- the first official U.S. representative in Vietnam
since the 1973 fall of Saigon.
“Since McCain got 28 medals,” Bell continued, “that equals to about a medal-and-a-half for
each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys -- grunts on the ground -- who had more
than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell you that there were times and situations where I’m sure
a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is how
many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down.”
For years, McCain has been an unchecked master at manipulating an overly friendly and
biased news media. The former POW turned Congressman, turned U.S. Senator, has managed
to gloss over his failures as a pilot and his collaborations with the enemy to become America’s
POW-hero presidential candidate.
For more information: www.againstmccain.com www.usveterandispatch.com

There are Beautiful Truths and there are Sad Truths. That Sen. McCain was broken by communists is a sad truth. Perhaps the Russians were in on it.

I've known people who've come back from Iraq and have taken lighters to their wrists at bars to show people how messed up they are. I've known people who still consider themselves "killing machines" and are still coming to terms with what they saw and did.

War sucks. Politicians should not campaign on the fact that they are war heros. And they shouldn't be attacked for what happened overseas. Character is what happens in the dark. And what happened overseas should stay overseas. And we should only go to war when it is absolutely necessary.

it might be time to take a break, drink a few juice boxes, eat some cheetos, and read up on the latest mccain talking points. i know you want to rack up those mccain points so that you can get your hands on some of those mccain golf balls. you just can't stop thinking about mccain's balls, can you? all white and dimply. golf balls, that is.

by Col. David H. Hackworth
John McCain is being hailed by the press as a "genuine war hero." But is he a war hero in the conventional sense like Audie Murphy and John Glenn? Or is his "war hero" status the creation of a very slick publicity campaign that plays on flag, duty, honor and country?
For sure, McCain has the fruitsalad a Silver Star, a Legion of Merit for Valor, a Distinguished Flying Cross, three Bronze Stars , two Commendation medals plus two Purple Hearts and a dozen service gongs.
On a purely medal count basis, he outweighs Murphy and Glenn, who both for years repeatedly performed extraordinary deeds on the ground or in the air against an armed enemy.
McCain's valor awards are based on what happened in 1967, when during his 23d mission over Vietnam, he was shot down, seriously injured, captured and then spent 5 1/2 brutal years as a POW.
In an attempt to find out exactly what the man did to earn these many hero awards, I asked his Senate office three times to provide copies of the narratives for each medal. I'm still waiting.
I next went to the Pentagon. Within a week, I received a recap of his medals and many of the narratives that give the details of what he did.
None of the awards, less the DFC, were for heroism over the battlefield where he spent no more than 20 hours. Two Naval officers described the awards as "boilerplate" and "part of an SOP medal package given to repatriated (Vietnamera) POWs."
McCain's Silver Star narrative for the period 27 October 1967 the day after he was shot down to 8 December 1968 reads: "His captors… subjected him to extreme mental and physical cruelties in an attempt to obtain military information and false confessions for propaganda purposes. Through his resistance to those brutalities, he contributed significantly towards the eventual abandonment…" of such harsh treatment by the North Vietnamese.
Yet in McCain's own words just four days after being captured, he admits he violated the U.S. Code of Conduct by telling his captors "O.K, I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital."
A Vietnam vet detractor says, "He received the nation's third highest award, the Silver Star, for treason. He provided aid and comfort to the enemy!"
The rest of his valor awards issued automatically every year while he was a POW read much like the Silver Star. More boilerplate often repeating the exact same words. An example: "By his heroic endeavors, exceptional skill, and devotion to duty, he reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Naval Service and the United States Armed Forces."
Yet McCain's conduct while a POW negates these glowing comments. The facts are that he signed a confession and declared himself a "black criminal who performed deeds of an air pirate." This statement and other interviews he gave to the Communist press press were used as propaganda to fan the flames of the antiwar movement.
Accounts by McCain and other writers tell of the horror he endured: relentlessly beatings, torture, broken limbs. All inflicted during savage interrogations. Yet no other POW was a witness to these accounts. A former POW says "No man witnessed another man during interrogations… We relied on each other to tell the truth when a man was returned to his cell."
The U.S. Navy says two eyewitnesses are required for any award of heroism. But for the valor awards McCain received, there are no eyewitnesses, less himself and his captors. And they're not talking.
Our POWs in Vietnam were treated appallingly. The Viets would either break a POW or kill him. POWs provided info beyond name, rank and serial number or they didn't come back.
Based on these stalwart men's horrific experiences, the Code of Conduct has been changed. A POW says, "Now the training is to give them something… don't risk permanent damage to health, mind or body." McCain refused an early release. An act of valor? Three former POWs told me he was ordered to turn it down by his U.S. POW commander and he "just followed orders."
McCain certainly doesn't appear to be a war hero by conventional standards, but rather a tough survivor whose handlers are overplaying the war hero card.
David H. Hackworth died in June 2005, he was a much-decorated and highly unconventional former career Army officer who became a combat legend in Vietnam. Col. Hackworth received 78 combat awards — including a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and eight Purple Hearts — during his 25-year military career which spanned the Korean and Vietnam wars..

Ha Ha ha! Grace! That made me laugh! All the Dems. I know are voting for McSame as well, and PARTICULARLY speaking for myself, with the telegenic Mitt Romney and his brilliance, his experience, why, he even speaks fluent French! Hell, that's unbeatable in my book!

No, Obama can go to Berlin and give one of his tiresome speeches, and act all grand and majestic like as if he is already President-NOT!

Oh! The landing will be SOOO ROUGH FOR THE MOST ARROGANT, SELF-ABSORBED ONE COME NOVEMBER! I JUST HOPE HE DOES CHOOSE BIDEN-BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE SUCH AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER FOR HIM-I'LL REALLY LAUGH MY ARSE OFF THEN! BUT I WOULD EXPECT SOMEONE WHO KNOWS NOTHING LIKE CAROLINE KENNEDY TO HAVE THE NITWIT POLITICAL SENSE TO PICK BIDEN-TOO FUNNY!

Where John Mccain plagiarized his cross in the sand story. The old man has been telling the BS story he no longer knows if it even actually happened to him or not.
see below

Along with other prisoners, he worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His life appeared to be nothing more than backbreaking labor and slow starvation. The intense suffering reduced him to a state of despair.

On one particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much for him. He saw no reason to continue his struggle, no reason to keep on living. His life made no difference in the world. So he gave up.

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.

Solzhenitsyn slowly rose to his feet, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Outwardly, nothing had changed. Inside, he had received hope.

So, it is very interesting that Mr. Solzhenitsyn and Mr. McCain had the same Christian guard/prisoner experience. Or maybe it is all just a made up story. Somehow I doubt that Alexander Solzhenitsyn heard John McCain's story and copied it.

This story was actually excerpted from "The Gulag Archipelago" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which was released in the US in 1973.

UPDATE X2: It seems that McCain is a bit of a Solzhenitsyn fan, as evidenced in his article in the NY Sun . It leaves little doubt Mccain stole the story from Solzhenitsyn

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HA HA HA HA! THESE COMMENTS FROM FOLKS WHO DON'T WANT OBAMA TO CHOOSE THE PLAGIARIZER FOR A VEEP-FUNNY! HOW ARE THEY GOING TO GET AROUND THAT LITTLE HURDLE, HUH? MCCAIN FOLKS WILL JUMP ALL OVER BIDEN'S PLAGIARIZING LIKE A CHEAP SUIT! OBAMA WILL BE DRAGGING AROUND MUCH MORE BAGGAGE WITH HIM THAN HE'LL EVER BE ABLE TO HANDLE WITH THAT BIDEN THING GOING ON-HE'LL GET SNAPPY!

"QUIT BOGARTING MY POSTS"....okay, that's it Spring Rain. you're a parody troll, aren't you? admit it. you're here to appear as ridiculous as possible as an effort to undermine the crediblity of any mccain supporters, right? i mean, nobody could be this unhinged and allowed to be out from under the supervision of the medical profession.

well played, Spring Rain. you have indeed succeeded in making mccain supporters seem like rabid lunatics. bravo. i bid you a good night.

You might as well know what actually happened so you can make up your own mind without the lies.
If you are interested read below.

Q: Does Obama have a real estate problem?

A political patron from whom he bought a strip of land is under federal indictment, but there's no evidence Obama did anything improper.
Here’s what happened: In 2005, Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, bid $1.65 million for a house on the south side of Chicago. According to newspaper reports, the owner was also trying to sell an undeveloped parcel of land adjacent to the property Obama was buying, and he wanted the sales of the two to close on the same day. Obama has said that he mentioned he was buying the house to a longtime political patron, Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a developer. Rezko’s wife wound up buying the lot adjacent to Obama’s. At the request of the Obamas, who were seeking a bit more space for their yard, she later sold them a 10-foot wide strip, or about one-sixth, of her land. The Obamas paid $104,500 for it, or about one-sixth of what Mrs. Rezko had paid for the entire property.

Obama doesn’t appear to have reaped any financial advantages from the transactions. The reason the deal has received a good bit of attention is that Tony Rezko – whose political contributions to Illinois’ former governor, Obama and others totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars – was known to be under federal investigation at the time the Obamas were purchasing their home. In 2006, Rezko was indicted in three federal cases: Two involved fraud schemes in which he allegedly demanded payments from firms wanting work from the enormous Illinois teachers’ pension fund and from those wanting favorable rulings from a state board that regulates the building of new hospital facilities. In the third, he was charged with fraudulently obtaining more than $10 million in loans for a pizza restaurant business; in December 2007, prosecutors added more fraud counts to that indictment.

Obama has a relationship with Rezko that dates back many years, but there’s no indication Obama did anything improper. Shortly after finishing law school, Obama, who had turned down a job offer from the developer, went to work at a law firm where he represented some community groups that partnered with Rezko to apply for housing rehabilitation loans. As a state legislator, he wrote letters to city and state officials in support of Rezko’s efforts to build apartments for the elderly with government money; the senator asserts that this was a project the community wanted. Obama got together with Rezko a couple of times a year, he has said.

Obama has donated campaign contributions from Rezko and his associates to charity, and he said in 2006, when the real estate transaction was reported by the press, that he made a “boneheaded” mistake by participating in the deal when it was known that Rezko was being investigated. “I regret it,” Obama said. “I’m going to make sure from this point on I don’t even come close to the line.”

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EXCUSE ME A-HOLE, BUT REZKO IS NOT, REPEAT NOT A "PERSON UNDER INDICTMENT" HE HAS BEEN CONVICTED OF 16 COUNTS OF FRAUD AND CORRUPTION-WITH MORE TO COME!

WE DON'T KNOW THE FULL STORY OF REZKO AND OBAMA-ONE THING IS FOR SURE, OBAMA HAS SOME VERY QUESTIONABLE CHOICES FOR FRIENDS-REZKO-CONVICTED FELON AND AYERS-AVOWED TERRORIST!

HA HA HA HA! THESE COMMENTS FROM FOLKS WHO DON'T WANT OBAMA TO CHOOSE THE PLAGIARIZER FOR A VEEP-FUNNY! HOW ARE THEY GOING TO GET AROUND THAT LITTLE HURDLE, HUH? MCCAIN FOLKS WILL JUMP ALL OVER BIDEN'S PLAGIARIZING LIKE A CHEAP SUIT! OBAMA WILL BE DRAGGING AROUND MUCH MORE BAGGAGE WITH HIM THAN HE'LL EVER BE ABLE TO HANDLE WITH THAT BIDEN THING GOING ON-HE'LL GET SNAPPY!

For years, the mainstream news media has refused to stop idolizing the so-called straight talking maverick John McCain long enough to question the mental health consequences of the years he spent as a "special" prisoner of the communists in North Vietnam.

McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for President, who could one day have his finger on the "red button," claims the communists subjected him to 5 ½ years of nonstop indoctrination sessions so intense that he attempted suicide.

Unfortunately for McCain, after his bomber was hit by anti-aircraft fire near Hanoi on October 26, 1967, he parachuted into the hands of an evil communist enemy who 7 years earlier had adopted Soviet methods of prisoner interrogation.

At that time, the Soviets were perfecting techniques designed "to put a man's mind into a fog so that he will mistake what is true for what is untrue, what is right for what is wrong, and come to believe what did not happen actually had happened."

Psychiatric Journals are flush with reports concluding that former POWs may remain entangled in "harsh psychological battles" with themselves for decades after returning home including difficulty in controlling intense emotions such as anger and stress.

In political circles, McCain, sometimes referred to as "insane McCain," is well known for having a "volcanic" temper which his colleagues say often erupts into vulgar language and personal insults.

Democrat Paul Johnson, the former mayor of Phoenix, experienced McCain's in your face temperament up close. "His volatility borders in the area of being unstable," Johnson said. "Before I let this guy put his finger on the button, I would have to give considerable pause."

The Journal of America Medicine reported in an 1996 article that being a former POW is associated with "increased cumulative incidence rates of chronic disorders of the peripheral nervous system, joints, and back and an increased hazard rate of peptic ulcer."

The 71 year-old McCain most certainly suffers pain and the weakening effects of chronic arthritis. He broke both arms when he was forced to eject after his bomber was hit. He says the Vietnamese periodically re-fractured his bones during years of interrogation and torture which rendered him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head.

McCain has never been publicly vetted about what and how much medications he is taking. Aside from his anger and arthritic pain issues, McCain has had reoccurring bouts of malignant melanoma, a deadly form of cancer that can spread quickly throughout the body.

These facts alone beg the question on how a President McCain, in the absence of his campaign staff handlers, would deal with a snap decision that had to be made "if the White House phone rang at 3 a.m."

McCain's POW experience is unique. His communist captors considered him the "crown prince" of U.S. POWs because his father, Adm. John McCain, was commander of all U.S. forces fighting in Vietnam. Because the communists believed he was from a "royal family" and would when finally released return to the United States to an important military or government job, they held him for two years in "solitary confinement."

In February, Reuters news reported that McCain's former captors are expressing delight in the news of his nomination as Republican party Presidential candidate. "In the past Senator McCain has conducted activities that had a positive impact in bringing the two nations [Vietnam/United States] closer. That is a point that Vietnamese people who follow the current affairs do recognize," said retired North Vietnamese Colonel Nguyen Van Phuong, representing retired and present members of the Vietnamese communist military.

Since McCain was first elected to Congress 1982 (and later to the Senate), he and his staff have expended tens of thousands of hours pushing U.S. legislation favoring communist Vietnam. In 1995, McCain stood with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. to give President Bill Clinton valuable political cover he needed to disregard the issue of missing U.S. POWs in Vietnam and remove the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam.

No U.S. POW had any communication with McCain or knew where he was being held during at least 8 to 12 months of McCain's first two years of captivity. He has either been unable or unwilling to account for the months he was missing from the POW system.

Within days of McCain's shoot down and after being told the identity of his famous father, the Vietnamese rushed him to Gai Lam military hospital (U.S. government documents), a medical facility normally unavailable to treat U.S. POWs. McCain was kept at Gai Lam for six weeks under the control of Soviet medical specialist anxious to test the use of their "mind and behavior modification" drugs on such an important prisoner.

McCain said the communists were so effective with their interrogation techniques that he broke on the fourth day after being captured and began cooperating. "Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I [McCain] did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant." Pages 193-194, Faith of My Fathers, by John McCain.

U.S. intelligence agents concluded in the early 1950s that Soviet intelligence (KGB) agents were experimenting on their prisoners with "mind control" techniques and behavior modification drugs

Allen W. Dulles, the newly confirmed CIA director acknowledged the dilemma in April 1953, when he told a gathering of Princeton alumni that "a sinister battle for men's minds" was underway. The Soviets, Dulles explained "have developed brain perversion techniques, some of which are so subtle and so abhorrent to our way of life that we have recoiled from facing up to them."

During the Cold War, the Soviets and the CIA began competing with secret experiments on prisoners aimed at honing the use of "chemical and biological materials capable of producing human behavioral and physiological changes." The experiments included isolation, sleep deprivation, humiliation, alternating with long hours of interrogation.

Since the Russians and Chinese (and our own CIA) have proven they can in a relative short time alter the basic emotional and behavior patterns of captives, it is fair to assume that McCain's unpredictable and often volatile temperament is directly related to his treatment as a 5 ½ prisoner of the communists.

The American public was first exposed to Soviet "brain perversion techniques" during Korean War when the communists launched a propaganda offensive featuring filmed and recorded testimony of captured U.S. servicemen confessing to war crimes including the use of germ warfare.

By the end of the Korean War, "70 percent of the 7,190 U.S. prisoners held in China had either made confessions or signed petitions calling for an end to the American war effort in Asia. Fifteen percent collaborated fully with the Chinese, and only 5 percent steadfastly resisted."

Military officials were especially alarmed when a significant number of the U.S. prisoners refused to recant their confessions as soon as they returned to the United States.

Beginning in 1960, KGB and Chinese agents directed the Vietnamese in establishing Vietnam's original interrogation guidelines for U.S. prisoners. They suggested interrogation techniques and issued specific intelligence requirements to be extracted during prisoner interrogations.

Official American position on POW confessions was that they were false and forced while privately expressing grave concern that the collaborations proved the communists had developed techniques that could "put a man's mind into a fog."

Psychologist have identified behavior in which a former prisoner emotionally bonds with an abuser as the Stockholm Syndrome. McCain was a strong advocate for prosecuting Bosnian, Yugoslavian and Iraqi war criminals and is adamantly opposed to any form of normalized relation with Cuba until it allows "free elections, human right organizations and a free and independent media."

Yet, McCain has resisted any kind of war crimes investigation of his former Vietnamese torturers. Prosecution and subsequent trials could bring to justice the Vietnamese torturers known by the American POWs as the Bug, Slopehead, the Prick, the Soft Soap Fairy, Rabbit, the Cat, Zorba and many others who were responsible for the murder in North Vietnam of at least 55 U.S. POWs and the brutal torture of hundreds of others.

In November 1991, Tracy Usry, chief investigator of the Minority Staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, testified before the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, that the Soviets interrogated U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam. McCain became outraged, interrupting Usry several times, arguing that "none of the returned U.S. prisoners of war released by Vietnam were ever interrogated by the Soviets."

Former KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin testified during the hearings that the KGB did interrogate U.S. POWs in Vietnam. Kalugin stated that one of the POWs worked on by the KGB was a "high-ranking naval officer," who, according to Kalugin, agreed to work with the Soviets upon his repatriation to the United States and has frequently appeared on U.S. television.

Col. Bui Tin, a former Senior Colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, testified on the same day, but after Usry, that because of his high position in the Communist Party during the war he had the authority to "read all documents and secret telegrams from the politburo" pertaining to American prisoners of war. He said that not only did the Soviets interrogate some American prisoners of war, but that they treated the Americans very badly.

McCain stunned onlookers at the hearing when he moved to the witness table and physically embraced Col. Tin as if he was a long, lost brother.

In 1949 Dr. Andrew Salter authored Conditioned Reflex Therapy, a pioneering work in the field of psychoanalysis. Ten years later, as Richard Condon was writing The Manchurian Candidate, he asked Dr. Salter to help "design" the brainwashed character for the book and subsequent movie.

More than 40 years later, in 1992, during the C-SPAN broadcasts of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, Dr. Salter watched the hearings from his New York City apartment. Salter became fascinated with McCain's overly aggressive and angry behavior toward witnesses, especially family members of men still missing in action. After a few hours he called a friend telling her, "the signs are all there, I'm afraid Senator John McCain has been brainwashed."

During the Senate Select hearings, McCain opposed all efforts by the POW/MIA families and activists to have the Select Committee expand its investigation to study how successful the Vietnamese, Soviet, Chinese and Cuban interrogation apparatuses were at exploiting American prisoners of war.

News pundants have elevated McCain to "the most popular national political figure in the country" by repeatedly describing him as a "war hero" based on his refusal accept a communist offer of "early release" from captivity.

What the media has carelessly refused to acknowledge is that the camp's senior ranking U.S. POW (SRO) had issued unquestionable orders that if a POW was to be released, "it would be the longest held prisoner" Because McCain was not the longest held POW, he would have faced a military court-marshal if he had accepted the offer.

It is incumbent upon McCain to prove to the American people that the 5 1/2 years he spent at the mercy of communist interrogators did not leave him with mental health issues that could hinder him in making snap decisions "if the White House phone rang at 3 a.m."

Is McCain taking any kind of pain or "nerve" medicines? If so, do the medicines cause emotional and physical reactions?

McCain was once treated for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is said to get worse over time for former POWs, what is the status of his treatment?

Does McCain still harbor stress triggered suicidal tendencies?

Where was McCain and what was happening to him during the months he was missing from the POW camp?

McCain implies that he made only one propaganda broadcast for the communists, but Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers say he made over 30. How many did he make and what did he get in return?

Why does McCain still deny that the Soviets were involved in the interrogation of U.S. POWs in Vietnam?

Does McCain's former interrogators, the communist Vietnamese, Russians, Chinese and Cubans have anything in their secret intelligence files about his behavior as a prisoner with which they could blackmail a President John McCain?

People don't change, Since they were married he has just lived off his wife like he did his family when he was young. Even his political career was bought for him. He has "NEVER" in his life personally created, built, or accomplished anything on his own. If he had been born into the circumstances of Obama he would have just lived a life on welfare and died of drugs and alcohol. Hell, he has already spent most of his life as an alcoholic as it is. Please, tell me what business he has built or anything he has ever accomplished on his own? Even with no responsibilities, no pressures and everything being paid for, the best he could do in school was to finish 894 out of a class of 899. My God, you can;t want this man for your president. Wake up. he wasn't even smart enough to raise the money to run for president with out his wife giving him an allowance. Jesus H Christ, step back and look at this man you want to vote for, is there something wrong with you people.
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HEY-QUIT BOGARTING MY POSTS-MR. ANONYMOUS-AFRAID TO LET ANYONE KNOW THAT YOU'RE AN OBAMA CAMPAIGN WORKER ON THE BLOGS!@

COULDN'T GIVE A DAMN WHETHER CINDY MCCAIN'S BEER MONEY BOUGHT THEM 20 HOMES, SO WHAT? AT LEAST THEY WERE BOUGHT HONESTLY! ON THE OTHER HAND, OBAMA'S CONVICTED FELON FRIEND REZKO GOT HIM VERY FAVORABLE FINANCING ON A FRICKIN MANSION IN CHICAGO WITH 4 FIREPLACES AND A MUSIC ROOM! THAT, IN EXCHANGE FOR ANY FAVORS OBAMA COULD DO FOR A FELON-NOT EXACTLY THE SAME THING, IS IT? AND WHAT ELSE DID OBAMA GET FROM REZKO WE DON'T KNOW YET, DO WE?

COULDN'T GIVE A DAMN WHETHER CINDY MCCAIN'S BEER MONEY BOUGHT THEM 20 HOMES, SO WHAT? AT LEAST THEY WERE BOUGHT HONESTLY! ON THE OTHER HAND, OBAMA'S CONVICTED FELON FRIEND REZKO GOT HIM VERY FAVORABLE FINANCING ON A FRICKIN MANSION IN CHICAGO WITH 4 FIREPLACES AND A MUSIC ROOM! THAT, IN EXCHANGE FOR ANY FAVORS OBAMA COULD DO FOR A FELON-NOT EXACTLY THE SAME THING, IS IT? AND WHAT ELSE DID OBAMA GET FROM REZKO WE DON'T KNOW YET, DO WE?

You might as well know what actually happened so you can make up your own mind without the lies.
If you are interested read below.

Q: Does Obama have a real estate problem?

A political patron from whom he bought a strip of land is under federal indictment, but there's no evidence Obama did anything improper.
Here’s what happened: In 2005, Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, bid $1.65 million for a house on the south side of Chicago. According to newspaper reports, the owner was also trying to sell an undeveloped parcel of land adjacent to the property Obama was buying, and he wanted the sales of the two to close on the same day. Obama has said that he mentioned he was buying the house to a longtime political patron, Antoin (Tony) Rezko, a developer. Rezko’s wife wound up buying the lot adjacent to Obama’s. At the request of the Obamas, who were seeking a bit more space for their yard, she later sold them a 10-foot wide strip, or about one-sixth, of her land. The Obamas paid $104,500 for it, or about one-sixth of what Mrs. Rezko had paid for the entire property.

Obama doesn’t appear to have reaped any financial advantages from the transactions. The reason the deal has received a good bit of attention is that Tony Rezko – whose political contributions to Illinois’ former governor, Obama and others totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars – was known to be under federal investigation at the time the Obamas were purchasing their home. In 2006, Rezko was indicted in three federal cases: Two involved fraud schemes in which he allegedly demanded payments from firms wanting work from the enormous Illinois teachers’ pension fund and from those wanting favorable rulings from a state board that regulates the building of new hospital facilities. In the third, he was charged with fraudulently obtaining more than $10 million in loans for a pizza restaurant business; in December 2007, prosecutors added more fraud counts to that indictment.

Obama has a relationship with Rezko that dates back many years, but there’s no indication Obama did anything improper. Shortly after finishing law school, Obama, who had turned down a job offer from the developer, went to work at a law firm where he represented some community groups that partnered with Rezko to apply for housing rehabilitation loans. As a state legislator, he wrote letters to city and state officials in support of Rezko’s efforts to build apartments for the elderly with government money; the senator asserts that this was a project the community wanted. Obama got together with Rezko a couple of times a year, he has said.

Obama has donated campaign contributions from Rezko and his associates to charity, and he said in 2006, when the real estate transaction was reported by the press, that he made a “boneheaded” mistake by participating in the deal when it was known that Rezko was being investigated. “I regret it,” Obama said. “I’m going to make sure from this point on I don’t even come close to the line.”

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I COULDN'T GIVE A DAMN WHETHER CINDY MCCAIN'S BEER MONEY BOUGHT THEM 20 HOMES, SO WHAT? AT LEAST THEY WERE BOUGHT HONESTLY! ON THE OTHER HAND, OBAMA'S CONVICTED FELON FRIEND REZKO GOT HIM VERY FAVORABLE FINANCING ON A FRICKIN MANSION IN CHICAGO WITH 4 FIREPLACES AND A MUSIC ROOM! THAT, IN EXCHANGE FOR ANY FAVORS OBAMA COULD DO FOR A FELON-NOT EXACTLY THE SAME THING, IS IT? AND WHAT ELSE DID OBAMA GET FROM REZKO WE DON'T KNOW YET, DO WE?

I COULDN'T GIVE A DAMN WHETHER CINDY MCCAIN'S BEER MONEY BOUGHT THEM 20 HOMES, SO WHAT? AT LEAST THEY WERE BOUGHT HONESTLY! ON THE OTHER HAND, OBAMA'S CONVICTED FELON FRIEND REZKO GOT HIM VERY FAVORABLE FINANCING ON A FRICKIN MANSION IN CHICAGO WITH 4 FIREPLACES AND A MUSIC ROOM! THAT, IN EXCHANGE FOR ANY FAVORS OBAMA COULD DO FOR A FELON-NOT EXACTLY THE SAME THING, IS IT? AND WHAT ELSE DID OBAMA GET FROM REZKO WE DON'T KNOW YET, DO WE?

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WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain arrived late at his Senate office on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just after the first plane hit the World Trade Center. “This is war,” he murmured to his aides. The sound of scrambling fighter planes rattled the windows, sending a tremor of panic through the room.

Erik Jacobs for The New York Times
John McCain said he had consulted Henry A. Kissinger on foreign policy before and after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Within hours, Mr. McCain, the Vietnam War hero and famed straight talker of the 2000 Republican primary, had taken on a new role: the leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against Al Qaeda far beyond Afghanistan. In a marathon of television and radio appearances, Mr. McCain recited a short list of other countries said to support terrorism, invariably including Iraq, Iran and Syria.

“There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” Mr. McCain said the next morning on ABC News. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he added, on MSNBC. “I don’t think if you got bin Laden tomorrow that the threat has disappeared,” he said on CBS, pointing toward other countries in the Middle East.

Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”

Now, as Mr. McCain prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination, his response to the attacks of Sept. 11 opens a window onto how he might approach the gravest responsibilities of a potential commander in chief. Like many, he immediately recalibrated his assessment of the unseen risks to America’s security. But he also began to suggest that he saw a new “opportunity” to deter other potential foes by punishing not only Al Qaeda but also Iraq.

“Just as Sept. 11 revolutionized our resolve to defeat our enemies, so has it brought into focus the opportunities we now have to secure and expand our freedom,” Mr. McCain told a NATO conference in Munich in early 2002, urging the Europeans to join what he portrayed as an all but certain assault on Saddam Hussein. “A better world is already emerging from the rubble.”

To his admirers, Mr. McCain’s tough response to Sept. 11 is at the heart of his appeal. They argue that he displayed the same decisiveness again last week in his swift calls to penalize Russia for its incursion into Georgia, in part by sending peacekeepers to police its border.

His critics charge that the emotion of Sept. 11 overwhelmed his former cool-eyed caution about deploying American troops without a clear national interest and a well-defined exit, turning him into a tool of the Bush administration in its push for a war to transform the region.

“He has the personality of a fighter pilot: when somebody stings you, you want to strike out,” said retired Gen. John H. Johns, a former friend and supporter of Mr. McCain who turned against him over the Iraq war. “Just like the American people, his reaction was: show me somebody to hit.”

Whether through ideology or instinct, though, Mr. McCain began making his case for invading Iraq to the public more than six months before the White House began to do the same. He drew on principles he learned growing up in a military family and on conclusions he formed as a prisoner in North Vietnam. He also returned to a conviction about “the common identity” of dangerous autocracies as far-flung as Serbia and North Korea that he had developed consulting with hawkish foreign policy thinkers to help sharpen the themes of his 2000 presidential campaign.

While pushing to take on Saddam Hussein, Mr. McCain also made arguments and statements that he may no longer wish to recall. He lauded the war planners he would later criticize, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney. (Mr. McCain even volunteered that he would have given the same job to Mr. Cheney.) He urged support for the later-discredited Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi’s opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, and echoed some of its suspect accusations in the national media. And he advanced misleading assertions not only about Mr. Hussein’s supposed weapons programs but also about his possible ties to international terrorists, Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, Mr. McCain’s supporters note that he became an early critic of the administration’s execution of the occupation, and they credit him with pushing the troop “surge” that helped bring stability. Mr. McCain, though, stands by his support for the war and expresses no regrets about his advocacy.

In written answers to questions, he blamed “Iraq’s opacity under Saddam” for any misleading remarks he made about the peril it posed.

The Sept. 11 attacks “demonstrated the grave threat posed by a hostile regime, possessing weapons of mass destruction, and with reported ties to terrorists,” Mr. McCain wrote in an e-mail message on Friday. Given Mr. Hussein’s history of pursuing illegal weapons and his avowed hostility to the United States, “his regime posed a threat we had to take seriously.” The attacks were still a reminder, Mr. McCain added, of the importance of international action “to prevent outlaw states — like Iran today — from developing weapons of mass destruction.”

Formative Years

Mr. McCain has been debating questions about the use of military force far longer than most. He grew up in a family that had sent a son to every American war since 1776, and international relations were a staple of the McCain family dinner table. Mr. McCain grew up listening to his father, Adm. John S. McCain Jr., deliver lectures on “The Four Ocean Navy and the Soviet Threat,” closing with a slide of an image he considered the ultimate factor in the balance of power: a soldier marching through a rice paddy with a rifle at his shoulder.

“To quote Sherman, war is all hell and we need to fight it out and get it over with and that is when the killing stops,” recalled Joe McCain, Senator McCain’s younger brother.

Vietnam, for Senator McCain, reinforced those lessons. He has often said he blamed the Johnson administration’s pause in bombing for prolonging the war, and he credited President Richard M. Nixon’s renewed attacks with securing his release from a North Vietnamese prison. He has made the principle that the exercise of military power sets the bargaining table for international relations a consistent theme of his career ever since, and in his 2002 memoir he wrote that one of his lifelong convictions was “the imperative that American power never retreat in response to an inferior adversary’s provocation.”

But Mr. McCain also took away from Vietnam a second, restraining lesson: the necessity for broad domestic support for any military action. For years he opposed a string of interventions — in Lebanon, Haiti, Somalia, and, for a time, the Balkans — on the grounds that the public would balk at the loss of life without clear national interests. “The Vietnam thing,” he recently said.

In the late 1990s, however, while he was beginning to consider his 2000 presidential race, he started rebalancing his view of the needs to project American strength and to sustain public support. The 1995 massacre of 5,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica under NATO’s watch struck at his conscience, he has said, and in addition to America’s strategic national interests — in that case, the future and credibility of NATO — Mr. McCain began to speak more expansively about America’s moral obligations as the only remaining superpower.

His aides say he later described the American air strikes in Bosnia in 1996 and in Kosovo in 1999 as a parable of political leadership: Mr. McCain, Senator Bob Dole and others had rallied Congressional support for the strikes despite widespread public opposition, then watched approval soar after the intervention helped to bring peace.

“Americans elect their leaders to make these kinds of judgments,” Mr. McCain said in the e-mail message.

It was during the Balkan wars that Mr. McCain and his advisers read a 1997 article on the Wall Street Journal editorial page by William Kristol and David Brooks of The Weekly Standard — both now Op-Ed page columnists at The New York Times — promoting the idea of “national greatness” conservatism, defined by a more activist agenda at home and a more muscular role in the world.

“I wouldn’t call it a ‘eureka’ moment, but there was a sense that this is where we are headed and this is what we are trying to articulate and they have already done a lot of the work,” said John Weaver, a former McCain political adviser. “And, quite frankly, from a crass political point of view, we were in the making-friends business. The Weekly Standard represented a part of the primary electorate that we could get.”

Soon Mr. McCain and his aides were consulting regularly with the circle of hawkish foreign policy thinkers sometimes referred to as neoconservatives — including Mr. Kristol, Robert Kagan and Randy Scheunemann, a former aide to Mr. Dole who became a McCain campaign adviser — to develop the senator’s foreign policy ideas and instincts into the broad themes of a presidential campaign. (In his e-mail message, Mr. McCain noted that he had also consulted with friends like Henry A. Kissinger, known for a narrower view of American interests.)

One result was a series of speeches in which Mr. McCain called for “rogue state rollback.” He argued that disparate regional troublemakers, including Iraq, North Korea and Serbia, bore a common stamp: they were all autocracies. And as such, he contended, they were more likely to export terrorism, spread dangerous weapons, or start ethnic conflicts. In an early outline of what would become his initial response to the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. McCain argued that “swift and sure” retribution against any one of the rogue states was an essential deterrent to any of the others. But Mr. McCain’s advisers and aides say his “rogue state” speeches stopped short of the most sweeping international agenda put forth by Mr. Kristol, Mr. Kagan and their allies. Mr. McCain explicitly disavowed direct military action merely to advance American values, foreswearing any “global crusade” of interventions in favor of relying on covert and financial support for internal opposition groups.

As an example, he could point to his 1998 sponsorship of the Iraqi Liberation Act, which sought to direct nearly $100 million to Iraqis who hoped to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The bill, signed by President Bill Clinton, also endorsed the ouster of Mr. Hussein.

Mr. McCain said then that he doubted the United States could muster the political will to use ground troops to remove the Iraqi dictator any time soon. “It was much easier when Saddam Hussein was occupying Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia,” the senator told Fox News in November 1998. “We’d have to convince the American people that it’s worth again the sacrifice of American lives, because that would also be part of the price.”

Hard Calls

Mr. McCain spent the afternoon of Sept. 11 in a young aide’s studio apartment near the Capitol. There was no cable television, nothing but water in the kitchen, and the hallway reminded him of an old boxing gym. Evacuated from his office but stranded by traffic, he could not resist imagining himself at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. “There are not enough Secret Service agents in the world to keep me away from Washington and New York at a time like this,” Mr. McCain told an adviser.

Over the next days and weeks, however, Mr. McCain became almost as visible as he would have been as president. Broadcasters rushed to him as a patriotic icon and reassuring voice, and for weeks he was ubiquitous on the morning news programs, Sunday talk shows, cable news networks, and even late-night comedy shows.

In the spotlight, he pushed rogue state rollback one step further, arguing that the United States should go on the offensive as a warning to any other country that might condone such an attack. “These networks are well-embedded in some of these countries,” Mr. McCain said on Sept. 12, listing Iraq, Iran and Syria as potential targets of United States pressure. “We’re going to have to prove to them that we are very serious, and the price that they will pay will not only be for punishment but also deterrence.”

Although he had campaigned for President Bush during the 2000 general election, he was still largely frozen out of the White House because of animosities left over from the Republican primary. But after Mr. Bush declared he would hold responsible any country condoning terrorism, Mr. McCain called his leadership “magnificent” and his national security team the strongest “that has ever been assembled.” A few weeks later, Larry King of CNN asked whether he would have named Mr. Rumsfeld and Colin L. Powell to a McCain cabinet. “Oh, yes, and Cheney,” Mr. McCain answered, saying he, too, would have offered Mr. Cheney the vice presidency.

Even during the heat of the war in Afghanistan, Mr. McCain kept an eye on Iraq. To Jay Leno in mid-September, Mr. McCain said he believed “some other countries” had assisted Osama bin Laden, going on to suggest Iraq, Syria and Iran as potential suspects. In October 2001, when an Op-Ed page column in The New York Times speculated that Iraq, Russia or some other country might bear responsibility for that month’s anthrax mailings, Mr. McCain interrupted a question about Afghanistan from David Letterman on that night’s “Late Show.” “The second phase is Iraq,” Mr. McCain said, adding, “Some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq.” (The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it came from a federal government laboratory in Maryland.) By October, United States and foreign intelligence agencies had said publicly that they doubted any cooperation between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda, noting Al Qaeda’s opposition to such secular nationalists. American intelligence officials soon declared that Mr. Hussein had not supported international terrorism for nearly a decade.

But when the Czech government said that before the attacks, one of the 9/11 hijackers had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official, Mr. McCain seized the report as something close to a smoking gun. “The evidence is very clear,” he said three days later, in an Oct. 29 television interview. (Intelligence agencies quickly cast doubt on the meeting.)

Frustrated by the dearth of American intelligence about Iraq, Mr. McCain’s aides say, he had long sought to learn as much as he could from Iraqi opposition figures in exile, including Mr. Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. Over the years, Mr. McCain often urged support for the group, saying it had “significant support, in my view, inside Iraq.”

After Sept. 11, Mr. Chalabi’s group said an Iraqi emissary had once met with Osama bin Laden, and brought forward two Iraqi defectors who described terrorist training camps and biological weapons efforts. At times, Mr. McCain seemed to echo their accusations, citing the “two defectors” in a television interview and attesting to “credible reports of involvement between Iraqi administration officials, Iraqi officials and the terrorists.”

Growing Impatient

But United States intelligence officials had doubts about Mr. Chalabi at the time and have since discredited his group. In 2006, Mr. McCain acknowledged to The New Republic that he had been “too enamored with the I.N.C.” In his e-mail message, though, he said he never relied on the group for information about Iraq’s weapons program.

At a European security conference in February 2002, when the Bush administration still publicly maintained that it had made no decision about moving against Iraq, Mr. McCain described an invasion as all but certain. “A terrorist resides in Baghdad,” he said, adding, “A day of reckoning is approaching.”

Regime change in Iraq in addition to Afghanistan, he argued, would compel other sponsors of terrorism to mend their ways, “accomplishing by example what we would otherwise have to pursue through force of arms.”

Finally, as American troops massed in the Persian Gulf in early 2003, Mr. McCain grew impatient, his aides say, concerned that the White House was failing to act as the hot desert summer neared. Waiting, he warned in a speech in Washington, risked squandering the public and international support aroused by Sept. 11. “Does anyone really believe that the world’s will to contain Saddam won’t eventually collapse as utterly as it did in the 1990s?” Mr. McCain asked.

In retrospect, some of Mr. McCain’s critics now accuse him of looking for a pretext to justify the war. “McCain was hell-bent for leather: ‘Saddam Hussein is a bad guy, we have got to teach him, let’s send a message to the other people in the Middle East,’ ” said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts.

But Mr. McCain, in his e-mail message, said the reason he had supported the war was the evolving threat from Mr. Hussein.

“I believe voters elect their leaders based on their experience and judgment — their ability to make hard calls, for instance, on matters of war and peace,” he wrote. “It’s important to get them right.”

JOHN MCCAIN, TRAITOR TO HIS COUNTRY, COLLABORATOR WITH THE ENEMY, MILITARY DISGRACE.

Ted Sampley, a Vietnam Veteran and former Green Beret, issued a CHALLENGE to John McCain "If you can show us that the information presented in our mailer is untruthful . . . we will Stand Down" This CHALLENGE was issued during an interview with INSIDE EDITION on January 17, 2008. John, family members of Vietnam POW/MIA(s) have been waiting for more then 14 years for you to have the courage to face them eye to eye in front of the American Public - Here is your opportunity for some "STRAIGHT TALK." Stop hiding behind your fabricated "War Hero" persona. You know we can prove your collaborations with declassified government documents . . . It is time for the American people to get to know the REAL John McCain - the John McCain that the POW/MIA families witnessed during the 1991-93 US Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs . Bring It On John! HERE IS OUR NUMBER 252-527-0442
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WELL, ONE THING WE CAN SAY, NOBODY'S GONNA BE ABLE TO POINT FINGERS AT MCCAIN AND HIS AGE ANYMORE-SEN. BIDEN'S A CREAKY 65!-AND ON TOP OF THAT A PLAGIARIZER!-I'M SERIOUSLY AFRAID THAT OBAMA WITH HIS SHORT TEMPER, IS NOT GONNA BE UP TO THE CHALLENGE OF DEALING WITH THE BIDEN BARRAGE TO COME-BUT ONE THING IS FOR SURE, I'LL BE LAUGHING ALL THE WAY!

WELL, ONE THING WE CAN SAY, NOBODY'S GONNA BE ABLE TO POINT FINGERS AT MCCAIN AND HIS AGE ANYMORE-SEN. BIDEN'S A CREAKY 65!-AND ON TOP OF THAT A PLAGIARIZER!-I'M SERIOUSLY AFRAID THAT OBAMA WITH HIS SHORT TEMPER, IS NOT GONNA BE UP TO THE CHALLENGE OF DEALING WITH THE BIDEN BARRAGE TO COME-BUT ONE THING IS FOR SURE, I'LL BE LAUGHING ALL THE WAY!

An excellent choice. Always fun to watch the losers spew their venom after the pick. Worked really well during the primary when they tried to prevent Obama from taking the nomination. Will probably be just as effective all the way up to Obama's inaugeration.

Spring Rain, there's a key next to the "A" on your keyboard. it reads "Caps Lock." with just one click, you'll seem slightly less unhinged.

are you getting mccain points by throwing your poo against the wall here? do you get a prize when you earn enough points? can you get some of those john mccain golf balls he was selling on his website? you seem like the type of person who'd love to get their hands on some of those mccain balls and roll them around in your hands.

pack lots of juice boxes and cheetos. it's going to be a long stay in the wilderness.

You are so desperate to be heard. I am sorry people have no interest in what you think in the real world.

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BIG TO-DO OVER NOTHING, AND TYPICAL "OBAMA DRAMA"-THE DO-NOTHING OBAMA TEAMED UP WITH THE PLAGIARIZER ONE-NOTE BLOWHARD BIDEN, WHO'S SPENT HIS WHOLE LIFE TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE HE IS A FOREIGN POLICY EXPERT-NOT! TRULY THIS IS A REPLAY OF DUKAKIS/BENTSEN-SOMETHING QUITE A BIT LESS THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS-A DYNAMIC DUO THIS IS NOT! HA HA HA!

Who is the sucker, your the one up in the middle of the night frantically posting to an internet blog.

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HA HA HA! ALL THE OBAMA SUCKERS WHO SIGNED UP FOR THE TEXT, GET HIT UP FOR MONEY AND THOSE DAMNED IRRITATING MOVEON.ORG ADS AS WELL! OH YOU SO DESERVE THAT! HA HA HA!
Posted by: SPRING RAIN | August 23, 2008 12:46 AM

BIG TO-DO OVER NOTHING, AND TYPICAL "OBAMA DRAMA"-THE DO-NOTHING OBAMA TEAMED UP WITH THE PLAGIARIZER ONE-NOTE BLOWHARD BIDEN, WHO'S SPENT HIS WHOLE LIFE TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE HE IS A FOREIGN POLICY EXPERT-NOT! TRULY THIS IS A REPLAY OF DUKAKIS/BENTSEN-SOMETHING QUITE A BIT LESS THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS-A DYNAMIC DUO THIS IS NOT! HA HA HA!

Which are you talking about. Mccains plagiarized story about the cross in the sand? Or Mccains BS story about his wife and Mother Teresa?
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HA HA HA HA! THESE COMMENTS FROM FOLKS WHO DON'T WANT OBAMA TO CHOOSE THE PLAGIARIZER FOR A VEEP-FUNNY! HOW ARE THEY GOING TO GET AROUND THAT LITTLE HURDLE, HUH? MCCAIN FOLKS WILL JUMP ALL OVER BIDEN'S PLAGIARIZING LIKE A CHEAP SUIT! OBAMA WILL BE DRAGGING AROUND MUCH MORE BAGGAGE WITH HIM THAN HE'LL EVER BE ABLE TO HANDLE WITH THAT BIDEN THING GOING ON-HE'LL GET SNAPPY!

HA HA HA HA! THESE COMMENTS FROM FOLKS WHO DON'T WANT OBAMA TO CHOOSE THE PLAGIARIZER FOR A VEEP-FUNNY! HOW ARE THEY GOING TO GET AROUND THAT LITTLE HURDLE, HUH? MCCAIN FOLKS WILL JUMP ALL OVER BIDEN'S PLAGIARIZING LIKE A CHEAP SUIT! OBAMA WILL BE DRAGGING AROUND MUCH MORE BAGGAGE WITH HIM THAN HE'LL EVER BE ABLE TO HANDLE WITH THAT BIDEN THING GOING ON-HE'LL GET SNAPPY!

Obama-Biden: A 21st century American twist on the adventures of Huck Finn and Jim. In the weeks to come we will see how well this duo navigates through a difficult political terrain and if they can suceed in their quest for President and Vice President.

how many people do you know who can't remember how many homes their wife owns?

wow. mccain. what a maverick. hiding behind his wife's skirt. that's some true leadership right there.

and regarding the text messaging...i signed up a while back and have not gotten a single solicitation. so i'd suggest that once again the bush-mccain people don't know what they're saying, or they're just making stuff up.

and didja hear about the timetables for withdrawing from iraq? how are you all going to rationalize that one after the years of kicking and screaming about how timetables would be a disaster? time to re-up on the cheetos, i suppose.

I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way
of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense.

I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never
surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to
resist.

If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all means available. I will
make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither
parole nor special favors from the enemy.

If I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with my fellow prisoners.
I will give no information or take part in any action which might be
harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will
obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me, and will back them up in
every way.

When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give
only name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering
further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or
written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to
their cause.

I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom,
responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my
country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.

Ha Ha ha! Grace! That made me laugh! All the Dems. I know are voting for McSame as well, and PARTICULARLY speaking for myself, with the telegenic Mitt Romney and his brilliance, his experience, why, he even speaks fluent French! Hell, that's unbeatable in my book!

No, Obama can go to Berlin and give one of his tiresome speeches, and act all grand and majestic like as if he is already President-NOT!

Oh! The landing will be SOOO ROUGH FOR THE MOST ARROGANT, SELF-ABSORBED ONE COME NOVEMBER! I JUST HOPE HE DOES CHOOSE BIDEN-BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE SUCH AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER FOR HIM-I'LL REALLY LAUGH MY ARSE OFF THEN! BUT I WOULD EXPECT SOMEONE WHO KNOWS NOTHING LIKE CAROLINE KENNEDY TO HAVE THE NITWIT POLITICAL SENSE TO PICK BIDEN-TOO FUNNY!

If picked for VP, Biden would get a well deserved shot at the presidency himself. He's been ready for this for a long time. He would bring common sense to international policy, rather than superstition.

I have been reading the posts on this board and it is my considered opinion that beer is good, people are cold, and life is frothy. Before you crack open that next beer, crack open the door, talk a walk down the street, like up at the sky and thank God Almighty that you are free to talk as much trash as you want to on these boards!

Let it all out. Catharsis, baby! I LOVE me some white people. Rich, grey, poor, middle, portly - you people are funny!

Big Eddie Murphy smiles and grins to ya! You know, like old school Eddie. Pow! Hit you with some Love! Boom! Take that! White people! You can run, but you can't hide! Pow! Hit you with the luv stuff! Good God!~

"They talk about his houses (well, his wife's actually, but in these dweebs' parlance, women have no rights, and it is the man who counts). And they are looking and hoping for any other word slip, so they can pump more TV ads with their ill gotten monies."

Wow, these are Republican Wingnuts gone wild - they must be getting nervous.

The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.

The gutter rat groupies of NObama were originally attracted to their empty suit hero because he was going to unite Washington and kiss thy enemy and all that, and eschew politics of the old.

Now, these gutter rats have nothing positive to say about their man, who still has n't been able to buy any suits, not even on sale. SO what do they do?

Well, they attack McCain, that's what. They come up with names like McSame. They talk about his houses (well, his wife's actually, but in these dweebs' parlance, women have no rights, and it is the man who counts). And they are looking and hoping for any other word slip, so they can pump more TV ads with their ill gotten monies.

SO this is the new politics, eh?

Now you know every thing you need to, about Nobama, and his gutter rat groupies.